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| OIL PAINTING | ||
| PAPER PAINTING | ||
| LACQUER PAINTING | ||
| SILK PAINTING
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OIL PAINTING After the restoration of peace, Tran Van Can produced a canvas retying the rope of the irrigation scoop, which was a creation of high professional level he had long mastered. Duong Bich Lien looked at things in a global way, he brought landscapes and scenes to the level of symbols. In his canvas "Harvest", the author has simplified to the utmost the scene of harvest: only golden waves succeeding one another to the horizon. Nguyen Do Cung who was a veteran graduate of the FACI has made an oil painting The machine building workers in 1962. He spent a rather long time at the engineering factory of the Cam Pha mines, living and working with the workers. Piles of documents, drawings, and sketches were prepared for this painting depicting a nascent large-scale industry of the country. If one pleads for a "painting reflecting the individual" like Vlaminck - a French painter in the early 20th century - Bui Xuan Phai has been able to materialize this conception. It suffices to admire his paintings to realize that Bui Xuan Phai was in a state of mind heavy with past memories, that he took the past as a source of inspiration. Bui Xuan Phai was a veteran painter but he began to win public attention from the 1970s with his works on "The old streets of Hanoi". He had recourse to bright colors and stylized forms in black outlines, like a glass-panel of a window. He has contacted with the works of Rouault. Toulouse-Lautrec, and painters of force and rapidity has given influence which he applied to his paintings, adding the flavor of "The old streets of Hanoi" to that of modern time. Many young painters have received his influence and he is considered as one of the four most talented artists of our time. Over two decades 1970s and 1980s, it seemed that oil painting did not surpass that of the first year after the restoration of peace to respond to the demand of socialist realism.
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PAPER PAINTING Among the Vietnamese plastic arts, wood engraving is a long standing traditional one. We have inherited from our ancients from Dong Ho village a valuable tradition of wood engraving in color. These engravings are appreciated by generation to generation and have become an indispensable moral alimentation. Dong Ho images have their place deep in the soul of the people and their features have kept their sharpness in spite of the upheavals of the times. With color as red as peony, as yellow as ripe paddy, as green as a young rice plant the images have by themselves the taste of rural areas in all their characteristic rusticity. The engraving is always performed on the wood of persimmon-tree, which is soft and does not swell when dipped in water. In printing, starch plays an important role. Mixed with starch a coloring matter forms a solid and clear paste suitable for creation. Besides, scallop shells give a typically Vietnamese gleam and constitute a decorative element of printed pictures of a very simple treatment. The genre of painting on paper using gouache, water color, pastel, ink, color pencils, drawing charcoal, sauce occupies an important position in Vietnamese painting. In many cases, these pictures have been works of great artistic value, and what is particularly precious is that they have expressed the direct sensations of the painter before the objects, sensations that cannot be repeated. Quite a few of these painters have thus created representative works contributing to the different stages of the history of painting. Sy Tot has created the best of his gouache in the All children can study. The composition of the picture is pyramidal, the drawing without artifice, each figure is set off by light. It is surprising that Sy Tot's style highly resembles that of Le Nain, although Sy Tot has not even known Le Nain and his style stems merely from his intuition. |
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LACQUER PAINTING The principal material for pumice lacquer painting is Vietnamese lacquer, used to lacquer cultural objects and current usage articles. After his arrival in Hanoi, one day Inguimberty accompanied Nam Son in a visit to the Temple of Literature. He was amazed at a layer of lacquer covering the ancient cultural objects, the parallel sentences and the columns of the sanctuary. Time - several centuries - had changed this layer of lacquer into an extraordinarily beautiful color scales. Inguimberty was gained over by the "Annamite lacquer" and later on engaged in trying lacquer in painting. Inguimberty had made a great service to the development of Vietnam lacquer painting. He was of the view that only the Vietnamese were capable of making lacquer painting, just like oil painting was the privilege of Europeans. However this malicious resin has rather extravagant characteristics. To have it dry, it must be kept in heat. The cold and dry weather prevents it from being ever dry. To paint with lacquer, one must paint in depth what is in the external layer of the picture and paint above what is in the internal layer, then rub it with pumice and the picture will be visible. The strokes must be minute because there is a great deal of sticky matter and a high degree of homogeneity must be achieved in the lacquer, because everything might disappear during the pumicing. The creation is done in several stages, after each of them, the lacquer dries and only then can one start the following stage. A small mistake can be disastrous. Thousands of other difficulties are to be overcome, the working rules must be strictly observed. Only a true artisan in the lacquering art who has inherited the secrets transmitted from generation to generation can resolve these problems. The palette of lacquer painting includes only the color of canhgian (cockroach wings), then (black), son (red), silver and gold. Gold and silver must be pure gold and silver, which in the present are difficult to obtain. To prepare the color, mother-of-pearl and egg shell are also used. Other materials are sometimes not so effective. If all the complex stages are got over, sometimes still kept secret, we shall certainly obtain a marvelous world of material, color and light, a magnificent world unknown up to now. In 1958, a delegation of Vietnamese painters brought their lacquer works to the International Exhibition of Fine Arts held in Moscow by the socialist countries. Their works were highly appreciated when the contents of the works reflected the multiple aspects of daily life in a manner characterized by perspicacity and romanticism. From 1957 onwards, pumice lacquer was more and more recognized as the principal language of the Vietnamese painting. Almost all painters wanted to achieve the most important work of their life by means of this material. Tran Van Can has enthusiastically composed some most successful lacquer paintings in all his artist life. In the race to valorize this traditional material, Nguyen Gia Tri was the first to attain the aim. On the surfaces of the paintings, colours and material constitute layers that intermingle to form a bloc of amber perfectly limpid and Nguyen Gia Tri added strokes to set out his personages in the background, young girls standing or sitting, going to and from, pursuing a butterfly or picking flowers, playing under the leaves of a weeping willow floating in the wind, or walking on the bank of a lake where white lotuses are blooming. All were arranged in a harmonious rhythm with arabesques to make viewers feel the contrast between extreme richness and maximal modesty. Very few persons can equal Nguyen Gia Tri in lacquer painting. A painter who has made profound studies of pumice lacquer said: "Pumice lacquer can be compared to a religious man who observes strict control of himself, respecting the rigorous rules of his original religion. |
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SILK PAINTING In the conquest of nature, oil makes use of force, gets its physical force from pastes and kilograms of oil in the seven colour of the rain-bow, it is capable of confronting nature and wins victory. For its part, silk can only try to overwhelm forces by weakness, to vanquish great numbers by smaller numbers, in accordance with the effective play of "softness". In 1930, Nguyen Phan Chanh, referring to the silk paintings of the Chinese dynasties of Tang and Sung, made initial steps in Vietnamese silk painting. Later on, Tran Van Can, Luu Van Sin, Nguyen Tien Chung combined this painting with Western painting, providing it with a new technique and a new content. It is often said "as mild as silk painting". Their silks are very mild, but they are very neat, sometimes vigorous even. Forms, persons, landscapes are all clear as daylight and constitute a realist beauty of a scientific character. Silk represents an important language of Vietnamese painting after lacquer. Its capacity of absorption and dilution given to the works an impression of mellowness spreading through the woofs and wefts of silk, adding a certain vibration to the forms and colours.
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